Fox will be producing the third of the Narnia series, after Disney, which produced the first two, bowed out. High production costs for the profitable but CGI-intensive films was cited as the reason that Disney did not care to continue. The first two films are steady sellers on DVD.

The Washington Post is cutting its book coverage to seventy-five percent of what it has been, and stopping publication of book material as a separate section. This is especially notable because the aper has covered a more than usual amount of genre fiction.

With a big new conference scheduled for February 9th, one with Jeff Bezos in charge, the bets are that Kindle Two is on its way. Given it's going to cost over three hundred and fifty dollars, it's still not your electronic paperback. Going by leaked pictures, they still need to hire a stylist/designer. But it is substantially improved with Broadsheet technology, which is also available on Sony's latest reader.

Graphix released the ninth and final color volume of Jeff Smith’s epic fantasy adventure series Bone this month. THe first run of the comic was in black and white, but finishing the color version leaves open the door for—not another giant all-in-one volume—but a trilogy, since color printing requires heavier paper. PW chats with Jeff Smith.

Neil Gaiman won the 2009 Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins). Beth Krommes won the 2009 Randolph Caldecott Medal for The House in the Night (Houghton Mifflin), written by Susan Marie Swanson. The awards were announced this morning at the American Library Association’s midwinter conference in Denver.
There were four Newbery Honor Books named: The Underneath by Kathi Appelt (S&S/Atheneum); The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle (Henry Holt); Savvy by Ingrid Law (Dial/Walden Media); and After Tupac & D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson (Putnam).
There were three Caldecott Honor Books: A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever by Marla Frazee (Harcourt); How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz (FSG); and A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, illustrated by Melissa Sweet, written by Jen Bryant (Eerdmans).

The Disney version, long in the works, had to wait until the company had established its own style, and does not follow the book overly closely. Instead, it is filled with sketches, many of them by notable actors.

One of the cleverest takes on the original is the Cheshire Cat, voiced by Sterling Holloway.